The Best of Romans Chapter Three

 

Chapter Three

This is a chapter of questions, a chapter of questions and resolutions. Let me paraphrase the salient points. What advantage or profit is there to being a circumcised Jew? What if some do not believe – does that negate the faith of God? If our unrighteousness commends God, is he unrighteous when he takes vengeance? How, then, can God judge the world? If the truth of God has more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner? Are the servants of God any better than those who wrongly accuse the servants of God as evil-doers? Do we make the law void through our faith? May we boast ourselves through the laws handed down to the chosen of God or through the works of a circumcised Jew? Is God only the God of the Jews and not also the God of the Gentiles?

There are a lot of questions in this small chapter. Each question is a good and valid point projecting the spirit in which should be found every servant of God – not by works but by faith. Here are the conclusions of the author.

There is no accusation with the law, but through the law comes the knowledge of sin. Whatever the law says, it says to those under the law, that all mouths may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. It has already been proven that both Jews and Gentiles are under sin. There are none righteous, no, not one. With their tongues they have used deceit. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. They have not known the way of peace. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Therefore, in regard to both Jew and Gentile, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God.

But. To the Jew was committed the oracles of God. God will be found true and justified in all his sayings when liars arise to condemn God. Those who condemn what is true and justified or accuse the servants of God's will of evil – their damnation is deserved.

Where are those who understand? Where are those who seek after God?

The rightness of God has been shown to all, being witnessed both by the prophets of old and the oracles of God. It is the rightness of faith in Christ with partiality to neither Jew nor Gentile – all are equal in grace. For the Gentile has sinned without the knowledge of sin found in the law of the Jew but the Jew has sinned knowing the law which God gave them. Grace is to both through Jesus Christ. God made a way for sinful man to be redeemed, not through the law, but through the sacrifice of his son.

God made a way in that his son was able to incur divine favor toward man for past offenses. No man was just before God until Jesus came, being just, and justified all men who turned back to God through Jesus. It is a matter in which no man may boast himself – either through the law or through his own actions. It is outside the law, which always loops back to the knowledge of sin, and can only be attainable through faith in the sacrifice of the just son of God.

The conclusion of the author is that sinful man may be justified before God through faith in his son, outside of the deeds of the law. Faith becomes the new law, the new oracles of God. It is one and the same God who justifies both the Jew and the non-Jew through faith – a faith that neither stands opposed to nor in any way negates the law of God but, rather, establishes the law of God.

The law of the Jews may not, therefore, be a thing in and of itself but now depends upon faith in Jesus Christ for both its establishment and justification.